I love to talk about the recruiting funnel. The recruiting funnel is a version of the old sales funnel. A sales funnel report presents a "snapshot" of your sales function at any given point in time. It looks at the leads your sales organization is generating, then tracks the conversion rate as those leads are turned into prospects, then gradually converted to the final stage where they become customers. To end up with one customer at the end of the sales funnel, you'll need multiple leads. Knowing how many leads you need to get one customer lets you plan your sales activity to hit your budget.
I like to twist the sales funnel around to talk about the recruiting funnel (resumes, phone screens, interviews - needed to equal one hire), but after seeing this blog post, I suppose it's time to stop and consider that every candidate out there should have their own "job hunt funnel', and should be prepared for a long "cycle time" in their job search.
One man's "job hunt funnel" as described by Dot Tom:
"Last year as the recession took hold my employer took drastic action cutting back the marketing team. I was out of a job. In 25 years of working, it was the first time in my life that I needed unemployment benefits. While I didn’t keep an exact count, I suspect that I applied for over 300 jobs in the past 11 months. I’ve worked with at least 20 recruiters; done 150 phone screens and probably 100 face-to-face interviews. Today, 347 days after my search began, I start a new job with a great company that I’m very excited about!"
150 phone screens and 100 interviews over the course of a year to get a job he could be proud of. That's some lead time right there. Check out the post to see Tom's "five lessons from the unemployment line", which are pretty interesting...
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